Quite a lot has been written this year about fake fans and followers on some of the largest social media platforms. Mashable wrote about this a few months ago along with a Forbes article in August. Clearly this is a growing issue and one that does raise some concerns around reputation and risk management
So how do we keep check?
Social tools developer Social Bakers has released a Beta tool that interprets your Twitter followers and breaks them into three categories – Fake, Inactive, Good.
I ran this across two Twitter accounts I use daily and it returned the following:
- @smartpen – Fake 1%; Inactive – 22%; Good – 77%
- @smartselling – Fake 1%; Inactive – 20%; Good – 79%
I’d be interested to learn more from SocialBakers as to how they distinguish between Fake and Inactive – it’s certainly an interesting result and one that raises some key questions as brands and even individuals build large communities of fans and followers